Watch SPL: Kill Zone For Free

Too much of everything

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

I can't believe how misleading the reviews for this movie are! Everyone's just going on and on about how awesome and action packed it is.... Well, I got news for you: this movie is Terrible. Tortuously slow and boring. Horrible acting. Way too much tear-jerking, male bonding, and violin music. And the terrible dialogue just keeps going!!! It never ends!! I kept checking the time and thinking "Oh my God, it's only been 30 minutes??" And it never, ever gets better.The only good fight scene is in the last 15 minutes of the film, Donnie Yen vs. Sammo Hung. Do yourself a favor and just look up the fight scene on youtube. Even then, don't expect it to be an amazing fight. All in all, this movie was a huge disappointment and a total waste of an evening.

Kill Zone is yet another Hong Kong crime thriller with a little bit of moral ambiguity thrown in to convince the critics that it's deeper than it really is. It's certainly not an original film and it does feel a little bit like an Infernal Affairs wannabe. But is it still a good movie? Let's take a look, shall we?Firstly, the story. The story is that of a cop who tries to frame a mob boss for murder for murdering his witnesses in the past. But as expected, things eventually start going wrong and the cop ends up trying to both escape the law and the mob. This story is actually pretty good albeit a little cliché. To be honest, I am kinda sick of seeing the typical " bad cop " in Hong Kong crime thrillers. We all know he's gonna end up dead by the end of the movie and we all know things aren't going to go well for him so we just kinda end up sitting there waiting for sh!t to go down for him. But other than that, I quite like this story. I like how fast-paced it moves. It opens immediately with the murder of the witnesses via car crash and from then on it never slows down. Yip(director) goes through a lot of information using visuals instead of dialogue which I always like. He also keeps the film at a brisk 93 minute runtime without feeling rushed which is pretty commendable. So pacing is definitely one of the film's strong points!The story here does raise an interesting question, is it ever okay to break the law for the good of mankind? The cops in this movie murder, threaten, and provide fake evidence all just to frame the mob boss, Wong Po. Most of them end up getting murdered and the last survivor dies of a tumor in the end anyways. Wong Po in this movie is depicted as an extremely powerful crime boss here who's murdered probably dozens of people but should they be allowed to use dirty tactics just to send this man to prison? The movie never answers for us, it lets us decide on our own. So there is an interesting question to think after seeing this movie.Surprisingly, there isn't that much action in this movie. There's a few fight scenes in this movie and they are actually quite brutal and spectacular but this movie is a lot more plot-driven than action-driven. I really don't mind this because of how well-paced and intense this movie gets. When there are fights though, they are brutal, fast-paced, and intense. And you'll never be able to take your eyes off the screen.The performances are quite good. Simon Yam is actually really good here as a tough, ruthless cop. He seems like a good man blinded by rage. Donnie Yen is just playing Donnie Yen but he's always good at playing Donnie Yen so no complaints here. The one actor who I think steals the show is Sammo Hung. In the 80's and 90's, Sammo Hung was always the funny guy. He had a cute, chubby look to him so he was constantly typecast as a cute, lovable guy but here, he's not clowning around! In this movie, he is a complete bad@ss! Everyone else is good too.The cinematography has a very wide, clean look to it which makes the brutal violence look even more brutal. It's a very good looking film!Overall, it's a little cliché but it's still a fun, intense ride with a few interesting questions to discuss after seeing it so I'll give it a 7/10.

If you want to understand Kill Zone, you need at least a small grasp of the eastern concept of karma. Basically it means, that bad things that somebody does, will sooner or later backfire at him. This is the central theme of this movie.Kill Zone is a gritty police thriller about a bunch of cops aiming at taking down a crime lord. There are no real heroes in this, though. Every character sooner or later leaves the boundaries of moral behavior, and yes, there will be some kind of payback.Unfortunately this also makes it hard to root for any of the characters, although they are not completely unlikeable and their motives are understandable. Another problem is, that to remain within it's theme, the story stresses probabilities at times.If you want to watch this merely for the martial arts, be aware that the fight scenes only make up a small part of this movie. On the other hand they are excellently choreographed. The often mentioned, furious back alley knife vs. baton fight, might be one of the greatest martial arts scenes ever put on film.

Inspector Ma Kwun (Donnie Yen) must make some difficult decisions when he discovers that Chan (Simon Yam), the police detective he is about to replace, and his loyal men have been bending the law in order to convict ruthless gangland boss Wong Po (Sammo Hung).Donnie Yen first smashed his way onto my screen over twenty years ago in the excellent Hong Kong fight-fests In the Line of Duty 4 and Tiger Cage II; sadly, subsequent roles in some less than memorable films saw him slowly slipping off my radar during the 90s (with only Iron Monkey making any lasting impression on me). However, having just seen S.P.L. (AKA Kill Zone), a powerful crime drama enlivened by some amazingly brutal action, I'll be sure to track his every move from now on.Admittedly, with both Yen and Hung on board, I would have loved to have seen a little more fight action, but I found the story compelling enough to hold my attention until the inevitable bad guys/good guy showdown, at which point all hell breaks loose and kung fu fans finally get to enjoy some blisteringly fast and bloody battles. Also serving to make S.P.L. slightly more memorable than your average Hong Kong cop drama are the inclusion of a really loathsome assassin (played by Jacky Wu) and writer/director Wilson Yip's relentlessly grim approach which offers little hope for any of the characters and culminates in a real downer of an ending that left me speechless.7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.